Professional notice
McMillan Binch & Mendelsohn is a longstanding GCR 100 firm, thanks to its experienced team of competition specialists. The Canadian firm has seven equity partners and four non-equity partners, but just two associates. Practice leader and firm chairman William Rowley is a Who's Who nominee, along with Martin Low, a former enforcer at Canada's Department of Justice, and Neil Campbell. The firm saw one major departure this year: rising star Omar Wakil joined Torys. Offsetting this loss was the arrival of Larry Markowitz from Lavery de Billy in Montreal.
McMillan Binch Mendelsohn LLP
| Global head: William Rowley |
| Home jurisdiction: Canada |
| Total size of firm: 180 |
| No. of competition lawyers: 14 |
| % of firm specialised: 8 |
| Who's Who nominees: 3 |
| Non-equity partners: 4 |
| Associates: 2 |
| Other: 1 |
| No. of lateral partner hires: 1 |
| No. of partner departures: 1 |
| No. of internal promotions: 0 |
Deal work has been high on the agenda this year. McMillan Binch acted for drug company Novartis on the sale of its medical nutrition business to Nestle, and advised Walt Disney Corporation on the US$700 million acquisition of Club Penguin, an interactive children's website headquartered in Canada.
It advised SABIC on its acquisition of General Electric's plastics business, and is representing several complainants in the Bell Globe Media/CHUM and Thompson/Reuters merger reviews.
McMillan Binch has enjoyed a large docket of antitrust litigation work this year too. Among its clients were Air France/KLM, in relation to the international air cargo cartel investigation and litigation in Canada; Miller Brewing Company, in a dispute with Molson Canada over certain licence agreements that Miller alleges are anti-competitive; Micron, in three national Canadian class actions arising from the DRAM, SRAM and flash memory cartels; and GlaxoSmithKline, in the Canadian Paxil patent evergreening litigation. The firm is also advising several companies in relation to abuse of dominance investigations that have yet to be made public.
In addition, McMillan Binch is advising the International Competition Network's merger streamlining group to seek changes to merger control requirements in South Korea, India, Brazil and other jurisdictions to promote the implementation of the network's recommended practices.